These days, a presidential tweet can dictate the news cycle for days on end. But is it driving us to distraction?
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Four hundred years ago, English pirates brought enslaved Africans to America’s shores. We reflect on how the legacy of slavery has reverberated through the generations to the present.
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Myths of the Civil War and slavery are being kept alive at Confederate monuments, where visitors hear stories of “benevolent slave owners” and enslaved people “contented with their lot.” Plus, an artist finds herself in the middle of the creation of New Mexico’s most controversial historical monument.
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*Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.This post was originally published on Reveal.
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A giant mysterious illegal dump in Chicago was part of a federal investigation that brought down a dozen corrupt politicians, but it left neighborhood residents angry and feeling used.
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Myths of the Civil War and slavery are being kept alive at Confederate monuments, where visitors hear stories of “benevolent slave owners” and enslaved people “contented with their lot.” We team up with The Investigative Fund and discover how public money is supporting this false version of history.
Plus, an artist finds herself in the middle of the creation of New Mexico’s most controversial historical monument.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
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This episode was originally broadcast July 1, 2017.
Picture an American farmer. Chances are, the farmer you’re imagining is white – more than 9 out of 10 American farmers today are. But historically, African Americans played a huge role in agriculture. The nation’s economy was built largely on black farm labor: in bondage for hundreds of years, followed by a century of sharecropping and tenant farming.
In the early 1900s, African American families owned one-seventh of the nation’s farmland, 15 million acres. A hundred years later, black farmers own only one-quarter of the land they once held and now make up less than 1 percent of American farm families.
The federal government has admitted it was part of the problem. In 1997, a report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture said discrimination by the agency was a factor in the decline of black farms. A landmark class-action lawsuit on behalf of black farmers, Pigford v. Glickman, was settled in 1999, and the government paid out more than $2 billion as a result. But advocates for black farmers say problems persist.
On this episode of Reveal, reporter John Biewen of “Scene on Radio” tells the story of a black farmer who says the USDA treated him unfairly because of his race.Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
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Last fall, we threw out a simple question after a show about U.S. immigration policies: What do you wish you knew about immigration?
Across the country, listeners responded with hundreds of text messages – from small towns in Iowa, Colorado and Massachusetts to big cities such as Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago.
We chose four questions and took our team of reporters and producers to task to answer them.
To figure out the answers, we go deep into immigration court, help one listener uncover her grandfather’s secret past about entering the country and break down the path to legal citizenship. On the way, we meet scam artists, attorneys, asylum seekers and do-gooders learning immigration law for kicks.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
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Baltimore’s police department was already notorious.
But this year, eight former police officers were convicted on federal racketeering charges stemming from an FBI investigation. They belonged to an elite task force charged with getting guns off the city’s streets. Instead, the plainclothes cops roamed Baltimore neighborhoods at will, robbing people on the street, breaking into homes to steal money, drugs or guns and planting evidence on their victims.
The targets of the Gun Trace Task Force included drug dealers and ordinary citizens. One of its favorite tactics was to speed toward a group of men on a street corner, chase whoever ran and shake them down. On top of all this, the officers falsified their timesheets to almost double their salaries.
This episode of Reveal asks if the task force was simply a rogue operation or if the officers were aided and abetted by fellow cops and even supervisors within the department.
Don’t miss out on the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.This post was originally published on Reveal.
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Some police departments are embracing a set of tactics designed to reduce the use of force – and prevent police shootings. Rather than rushing in aggressively, officers back off, wait out people in crisis and use words instead of weapons.
But this training isn’t required in most states. Reveal teams up with APM Reports and finds that most cops spend a lot more time training to shoot their guns than learning how to avoid firing them.
This episode was originally broadcast on May 6, 2017.
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In 2014, WBEZ Chicago reporter Linda Lutton followed a class of fourth-graders at William Penn Elementary School on Chicago’s West Side. She wanted to explore a big idea that’s at the heart of the American dream: Can public schools be the great equalizer in society, giving everyone a chance to succeed, no matter where they come from or how much money their families have?
Lutton told the story in a Peabody Award-nominated show, “The View from Room 205.” This week, Reveal presents a condensed version of that documentary.
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Reveal digs deep – and gets results. By mining data from 31 million records, we discovered a pattern of routine mortgage loan denials to applicants of color in more than 60 U.S. metropolitan areas. Our story led to attorneys generals’ investigations and lawmakers’ demands for accountability at the federal, state and city levels. It also led to thousands of questions from you, our listeners. Our reporters answered a handful of them.
Don’t miss the next big story. Get the Weekly Reveal newsletter today.
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Across the country, universities are being criticized over issues of money: from how they spend their endowments, to how they raise tuition, to how they award financial aid. Many students are feeling the pinch. They’re going into debt to pay for their education, or abandoning their dreams of a college degree altogether. This week on Reveal, we take a look at the bottom line for universities and students. This episode was originally broadcast on Dec. 9, 2017.
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This post was originally published on Reveal.
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Chicago is experiencing a reversal of the great migration that propelled African Americans northward in search of opportunity in the first half of the 20th century. Since 2000, a quarter-million black Chicagoans have left. The reasons include decades of bad policy and broken promises on affordable housing, education and public safety.
On this episode of Reveal, we team up with the Data Reporting Lab in Chicago to examine how trauma care teams have done more than law enforcement to reduce the gun homicide rate and with The Chicago Reporter to describe how activists are pushing back against the shutdown of 50 public schools at once.
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Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.
Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.
And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
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It’s been 10 years since the great housing bust and lending is back. Not everyone is getting a fair shot at getting a loan. In dozens of cities across the country, lenders are more likely to deny loans to applicants of color than white ones – even when you take into account how much money they make and how much they want to borrow.
This type of housing discrimination was outlawed 50 years ago but it’s making a comeback. On this episode of Reveal, we dig into the new redlining.
This episode features an interactive text-messaging tool that allows you to learn more about who gets conventional home loans where you live. To get started, text HOME to 202-873-8325.
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Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.
Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.
And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
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Reveal has had a busy year – our team has chased stories from Oklahoma to Bermuda. We exposed a rehab program that provides labor at a chicken processing plant that’s been called a slave camp and followed the money trail of the Paradise Papers, leaked documents that revealed international tax shelters for some of America’s biggest companies. We reported on the rise of hate crimes and investigated hate groups.
In this episode, we look at some of our best reporting from 2017 and how Reveal has made an impact in our world.
Head over to revealnews.org for more of our reporting.
Follow us on Facebook at fb.com/ThisIsReveal and on Twitter @reveal.
And to see some of what you’re hearing, we’re also on Instagram @revealnews.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
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In 1996, Eddie Wise, the son of a sharecropper, purchased a farm with a loan from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Twenty years later, the USDA foreclosed on the property and evicted him. Reveal investigates his claim that he was discriminated against because of his race.
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To explore more reporting, visit revealnews.org or find us on fb.com/ThisIsReveal, Twitter @reveal or Instagram @revealnews.
This post was originally published on Reveal.